"Is there any greater torment then to grow old without having fulfilled the dreams of our youth? Attack your dreams or be attack by them later!"

In my prior life, I attempted to convey this to various people in my family, with the response being 'no response' to 'stop being a child'. My standard line was this: I don't want to be 80, looking back at my life and say, 'damn, I should've done.......' Now, I said this while working 50+ hrs/week AND building a house.....and then a second house & barn! It wasn't like I was not employed or working. In my experience, alot of people never look beyond 'this afternoon' and when you try to explain to them where your headed/what you want to experience and 'feel', they look at you like your speaking Russian! They just don't 'get it', nor do they want to understand it!

Very interested on where your headed!

Can't agree with you more. I've been working hard, being "good", being responsible, etc. for a long while now, and at every turn there's the government with its hand out demanding more money. It seems the system has essentially become a grist mill, hungry for more willing fools to throw their youth into, with a "comfortable" sustenance life as the promised reward.

But where's the fun?? And where's this "free" country I keep hearing so much about?!?! It seems like there's a goldang rule for every little thing, and violating any of them results in either losing your job, jail or a fine of some sort. "Don't park there!" "Don't ride your bike there!" "That's sexual harassment!", "I can't believe you just said that!", "Don't walk outside with that beer!" "You were going 50 in a 45!" Etc. etc. etc. I probably spend 100 hours a year just keeping my government paperwork up to date for vehicles, homes, licenses, etc. it's just mind numbing.

"Liberalism" is destroying our society and turning us into a bunch of automatons, under the guise of "safety" and "respect" or "tolerance". It's a sad, ironic joke that we say its about "tolerance" and yet we have less and less actual tolerance for any kind of misstep, or freedom.

I feel the sands of time filtering through the hour glass, the grip of fear of dying of boredom.....of being in the same place, doing the same thing 30 years from now. I feel as though I'm on the precipice of a great chasm, ready to risk life and limb for a chance to just let go and plunge headlong into the abyss, for a chance to see what's at the bottom, and with no way of knowing if I can ever climb back out. Just for the sheer excitement and uncontrolled chaos it will bring.

And reading your report (and those of a few other folks) is leading me slowly closer to the jumping off point. Closer to the day when I will throw off the shackles of this incredibly constrained existence, and just LIVE.

Thank you for sharing your experience, I'm not entirely sure you can begin to know how influential reading this can be for certain individuals - like me.